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Wirt’s pretty sure he’s permanently damaged his tailbone; surely someone can only fall on his ass a finite number of times before he loses the ability to walk properly. He winces from where he’s sitting on the ice, random patrons snickering as they glide around him, and tries to put on a brave face when Sara extends a hand to help him up.
“Nice wipeout,” his girlfriend teases him, grasping his gloved hand in hers to hoist him to his feet. As soon as Wirt’s standing—wobbling like a newborn fawn on his figure skates—she bows in to peck him on the cheek... and swipe her mitten oh-so-subtly over his butt to dust off the nice coating of frost he’s collected on his back pockets. Wirt, right on cue, blushes to the tips of his ears. More than a month of dating gone by and his stomach still swoops with bat-sized butterflies. “Let’s take it slower this time around, all right? C’mon, I’ll pull you like a tugboat.”
“So the sophisticated swan teaches the ungainly penguin to fly,” Wirt sighs wistfully. He squeezes Sara hand and follows her lead to rejoin the counterclockwise circle of families, friends, and lovers swishing around the outdoor rink.
It’s a gorgeous evening for ice skating. Wirt had picked this venue specifically for its quaint, old-timey atmosphere, knowing that Sara would adore the hokey holiday decorations and the stubbornly 1950s decor. The owners have strung a gaudy abundance of lights around the rink so that the badly scarred ice glitters rainbow; somewhere a jukebox belts out Christmas songs with the occasional brassy jitterbug; the air is redolent with the smell of salted butter popcorn, hot cider that Wirt’s ninety-nine percent sure is just apple juice heated in a microwave, and the gingerbread this place only bakes in December. Above the rink, the purple sky is hazed with the orange-yellow of civilization’s electric glow. It’s crowded, loud, and bursting at the seams with pre-holiday excitement.
In short, this place is perfect for Sara.
On her hockey skates, Sara is much more graceful than Wirt. She moves with enviable confidence to guide him around raucous kids daring each other to skate backward and past terrified couples inching along the walls. Her dark, dark eyes reflect the twinkling bulbs surrounding them like red-green-blue stars. On the knot of her scarf, she’s wearing the scarlet chrysanthemum pin Wirt discovered at an antique warehouse.
(He’d poured over so many books explaining the language of flowers, had written poems to help him remember which colors meant “adoration” and which ones meant “sorrow” so he wouldn’t mix them up, and his heart had clogged his throat when he presented the pin to Sara after their fifth date. Would the red flower freak her out with its message of “love” and “deep passion”? Was this too much too soon? Jeez—it wasn’t as if the pin were an engagement ring, but still his ears had flushed the same color as the bloom and he’d stammered as Sara held his gift up wonderingly, running her thumb over the smooth enamel. “I s-saw it and thought m-maybe you could wear it on your denim jacket, you know, with all those other p-pins and patches?”
Dread when she bit her lip. Then Sara had said, “It’s cute,” and pinned it right above her heart. And she’s decorated her hat or her scarf with the little red mum every time they’ve gone out so far.)
“You’re getting pretty good at this, Scott Hamilton.” Sara boops him on the nose and veers away before Wirt can retaliate. “Why don’t you try a backflip?”
“Ah yes, the most impressive trick in the book—attempting a backflip and dying instantly.” Wirt snarks with a smile and rolls his eyes at Sara’s bright laugh. His girlfriend makes him forget that he’s surrounded by strangers watching him from every angle; last year he wouldn’t have even entertained the notion of lacing up skates because the very possibility of any fellow teenagers catching him face-planting on the rink made him want to puke.
A lot of things have changed since Halloween. Social situations continue to scare Wirt more than any R-rated horror movie… but he recovers faster from moments of humiliation and panic, gritting his teeth through dread instead of locking himself up at home. He has yet to let Sara listen to that tape he made for her back in October—but he’s working up to it. Seriously. Maybe on their next date night when the weather isn’t so pleasantly clear and so perfectly suited to moseying around a ring of blinking bulbs and paper snowflake cutouts.
Wirt catches up to Sara (or she deigns to slow down enough for him to catch up) and he grabs her hand again. “Are you having fun?” he asks eagerly, only the slightest bit anxious. “Do you want to take a break? Maybe get some hot chocolate or popcorn or—”
“INCOMING!”
Approximately fifty five pounds of rambunctious child slams into the backs of Wirt’s knees. He folds like a Christmas card—his entire life flashing before his eyes—and slides about a yard on his back, lanky limbs splayed out as if he decided to make a snow angel right there on the ice. He stares blankly up at criss-crossing lines of primary-colored lights and the milky half moon.
“Wirt?” Sara sails toward his side to lean over him, palm covering her mouth, voice tight with the effort of restraining a fit of giggles.
“I’m fine,” Wirt wheezes, dazed. He waves a nonchalant hand at everyone skating callously around him. “No, no, nobody slow down… I’m totally okay… I’ll never walk again, but don’t trouble yourselves on my account…”
Greg’s face peeks across him on the other side. He’s grinning widely over the folds of his scarf and doesn’t look guilty whatsoever. “I did say ‘incoming,’ Wirt,” the kid says.
“I knew I’d regret bringing you along,” Wirt grumbles out the side of his mouth. His statement lacks the bitterness that would have soured it in the past; he accepts both Sara’s and Greg’s help stacking himself stiffly upright, groaning theatrically, and pretends not to enjoy how they both hug his arms like affectionate bodyguards as they chaperone him to one of the exits for a snack break.
Most older brothers would rather bury themselves alive than have their little siblings tag along with them on a romantic date. Wirt did not have a choice in the matter, since his parents would only give him permission to take the car if he also took Greg. This means Wirt’s had to sneak in public displays of affection when Greg isn’t looking (thank God some of Greg's school friends are here to distract him) and, yeah, it’s plenty awkward… though Sara never seems to mind when Wirt has to babysit.
That’s part of her fantastic-ness. She always simply accepts Wirt: his permanent shyness and his gauche attitude and his nerd-knowledge and the talkative little brother that comes with the package. He could kick himself for not having the courage to ask her out sooner.
Oh well. Better late than never. Wirt has brushed close enough to Death’s fell cloak to realize that he needs to start actually living.
At an empty picnic table, Sara and Greg launch into a spirited debate on whether a polar bear would win a fight against Santa Claus (“Santa is magical, Greg” combated by “Sure but polar bears are BEARS”) while Wirt wobbles on his blades to the concessions stand. He wrinkles his nose a bit at the anachronistic clash of 1960s motifs sprinkled alongside the more accurate 1950s paraphernalia (what were they thinking, honestly?) and returns to the bench with two ciders, one cocoa, and a tub of popcorn clutched precariously in his arms.
Sara is graciously conceding victory to Greg. “How silly of me—obviously a polar bear could rip Santa to pieces.” She accepts the steaming styrofoam cup that Wirt passes her and offers him a thankful beam that stabs Wirt with a Cupid’s arrow directly through his chest. “Although… what if the reindeer could tag in? What then?”
Greg swings his hockey-skated feet over the bench and scoffs with a mouthful of popcorn. “C’mon Wirf,” he muffles out. “Reindeer? Agaimft a polar bear?”
Wirt wraps his arm around Sara’s shoulders—a move that practically sent him into cardiac arrest the first time he executed the maneuver—and gingerly sips his “cider.” (Yeah: this stuff is absolutely hot apple juice.)
“Well, Santa’s reindeer can fly, so that affords them an aerial advantage,” Wirt reasons wisely. When Greg spits kernels in betrayed astonishment, Wirt pulls his brother’s knit cap down over his eyes. “They could divebomb the bear. Trample it with their hooves…”
Someone’s slipped a dollar into the jukebox; a tinny recording of “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” clangs over the speakers, much to Sara’s crowing delight. “It’s a sign,” she chuckles at Greg’s huge eyes. “Polar bear beats Santa, sure, but eight reindeer definitely beat polar bear.”
“Aerial advantage,” Wirt reiterates soberly. He and Sara bump one another’s styrofoam cups in a cheers. Greg shakes his head, thoroughly disgusted.
At one point the younger boy tires of Wirt and his significant other making shameless googoo eyes at each other. He pesters Wirt for a dollar and wanders toward the jukebox himself, leaving the lovebirds to peoplewatch. Greg’s been busy zooming as fast as he can around the rink all night, racing a few of his buddies that have come here with their parents, but he hasn’t seen Wirt kiss Sara once. Which is a downright crime in Greg’s humble opinion. He scrolls through the jukebox choices with utmost focus and pumps his fist victoriously upon finding the most lovey-dovey holiday jingle of all time.
Wirt glances away from the liquid black of Sara’s twinkling eyes only because the frantic clump of Greg in his skates trotting full-speed back to the picnic table sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. “D-don’t run in those, Greg, you could fall and hurt yourself—”
Greg about chokes Wirt by tugging impatiently on his big brother’s scarf. “You gotta get back on the ice,” Greg insists. “I picked a good tune for you and Sara-the-Bee but you gotta get in there before the queue gets to it so go go go!”
“What’s he talking about?” Sara wonders, raising one brow. She patiently endures Greg shooing her off the bench and herding her and Wirt into the rink again despite Wirt’s balking (“We can’t just leave our trash at the table, Greg!”), since the little guy is pretty darn adamant.
Wirt beats her into the current of bodies after swatting away Greg’s pushing hands. “Sorry about him,” he sighs, exasperated. He casually offers his elbow and Sara takes it easy as breathing, easy as snowflakes falling on eyelashes. So late in the night, most families have left; couples of all ages dominate the ice, bundled up against the brisk cold. “I love him but… you know how he gets. He’s excitable.”
Months ago that would have come out on an edge of resentment; now Wirt catches the affection that thaws his annoyance and surprises himself.
Wirt instantly recognizes the first jazzy notes of Dean Martin’s “I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm” crackling overhead. He can’t stop himself from going rigid in Sara’s hold, heat creeping up from his stomach to sizzle across his face and up to his messy hairline. As he and Sara complete their first revolution around the ice, his disbelieving stare meets Greg’s from where Greg is leaning against the outer wall of the rink; Greg shows all his teeth and gives two encouraging thumbs up.
Sara bumps Wirt with her hip enough to jostle him into the present. “You gotta move your legs, Mr. Ice Sculpture.”
If this is the song that Greg picked, that means that Greg knows that Wirt likes it, and the number one reason why Greg would know this is if he’s been listening to Wirt squawking through the lyrics on a personal rendition of the tune for Sara’s holiday tape in the privacy of Wirt’s bedroom which is supposed to be a secret.
Ohhhh… Wirt is going to kill him.
Sara hums the melody until she playfully nudges Wirt into joining along; he nervously sings the words under his breath and stares resolutely ahead. “What do I care, if icicles form?” She nuzzles a butterfly kiss into the corner of his jaw and Wirt’s thankful she’s so competent on a slick surface because he’s pretty sure the part of his brain that’s supposed to control the rest of his body just shut off. “I’ve g-got my love to keep me warm…”
His girlfriend draws away only to cut in front of him, facing him, clasping his hands in both of hers while she floats backward, pulling him like a kite. “Off with my overcoat,” Sara croons, waggling her eyebrows. “Off with my gloves.”
How had it escaped his notice that this song would go great with a striptease? Wirt swallows a lump the size of a baseball. His voice cracks as he raises one arm to spin Sara into a ballroom twirl. It doesn’t work out so well on skates, and Sara swoops into him, nearly taking them both out. “Who needs an overc—crap, s-sorry, oops, I think I almost killed us—”
Sara chuckles through “so I will weather the storm.” Her scarf slithers off her throat and loops around Wirt’s neck. He blinks at her questioningly, maybe with a pinch of fear. They’re drifting toward the outer edges of the rink, slowing to the corner that overlooks the quiet parking lot. Wirt should be crawling out of his skin; he's been acting like such a dope out in the open where anyone can judge him. He’s certain a few people that live on his street are here. A section of his mind wants to nitpick how his jeans are wet from falling so many times and he probably has a popcorn kernel in his teeth and his hair is a mess from being stuffed under a hat all day but Sara is pressing him against the wall to press her lips against the corner of his mouth, soft as the down padding her coat, as warm and sweet as the hot chocolate she’d been sipping.
“I’ve got my love to keep my warm,” she murmurs, close enough for her breath to caress his furiously scarlet face.
“We’ve got time for one more song,” the DJ brays suddenly over the loudspeaker—and Wirt didn’t think it was possible to have two strokes in a row, and yet here he is. “Get to cuttin’ up that ice while it’s still cold!”
“What else would ice be?” Wirt babbles deliriously. Sara pats his cheek.
“Our two minutes of alone time are up, partner,” she informs him, gesturing toward Greg flailing across the rink in their direction. “Shall we cut up some ice?”
“RACE ME,” Greg demands the second he’s within two feet of them. “Last one to the finish line is polar bear food!”
“There’s no finish line, we’re skating in a circle,” Wirt gripes. Sara and Greg are, of course, not listening; his brother scoots as if his life depends on it, and Sara offers no more than a shrug and an evil wink as a signal that it is on.
In the end, Sara is declared the winner for scraping to a stop at the exit a nanosecond ahead of Greg. Wirt is given a conciliatory pat on the back and smooch on the cheek (from Greg and Sara, respectively) and has to remind his competitors that without him, they have no ride home. Sara retaliates by bringing Wirt’s attention to the unimaginable things he’ll be missing out on if he dares leave without her; Wirt spends the rest of the return trip deflecting Greg’s unending interrogation (“Why are you blushing? What were you guys talking about? Did you like the song I picked out especially for you?”)
Wirt drops Sara off at her house. He kisses her wool-sheathed knuckles goodbye and heads home with the radio jingling on the Christmas station.
Later, Wirt helps prepare Greg for bed, participating in the pre-bedtime rituals he previously avoided like used needles. Brushing his teeth with Greg is not half as painful as he remembers… although it’s still somewhat painful, given that his younger sibling has not stopped commenting on his version of events since they walked through the front door.
“That was a good date night,” Greg observes, as if he were an integral part of the evening and not a bonus guest tacked on by their parents. “Your future husband skills are gettin’ pretty sharp, Brother-O-Mine.”
Wirt gags on his toothpaste. “Never say that again,” he begs after spitting into the sink.
Greg wriggles into his pajamas. Wirt wishes him and Jason Funderburker the bullfrog goodnight. Upon shutting himself in his room at last to write verses about lights glimmering on ice and a scarf shared between paramours, Wirt has to smile. Greg is right… it was a good date night. The kind that he wouldn’t have dreamed of this fall, when he existed as a self-imposed pariah who didn’t know how to have fun.
A ridiculously fuzzy bloom of saccharine sentimentality warms him from the inside out. Greg is okay. Wirt is okay. Tonight was a good night.
And Wirt dares to hope that there will be many more to come.